第101章

The Fosdick car was at the Grand Central Station when the Knickerbocker Limited pulled in.And Madeline, a wonderfully furred and veiled and hatted Madeline, was waiting there behind the rail as he came up the runway from the train.It was amazing the fact that it was really she.It was more amazing still to kiss her there in public, to hold her hand without fear that some one might see.To--"Shall I take your bags, sir?"

It was the Fosdick footman who asked it.Albert started guiltily.

Then he laughed, realizing that the hand-holding and the rest were no longer criminal offenses.He surrendered his luggage to the man.A few minutes later he and Madeline were in the limousine, which was moving rapidly up the Avenue.And Madeline was asking questions and he was answering and--and still it was all a dream.

It COULDN'T be real.

It was even more like a dream when the limousine drew up before the door of the Fosdick home and they entered that home together.For there was Mrs.Fosdick, as ever majestic, commanding, awe-inspiring, the same Mrs.Fosdick who had, in her letter to his grandfather, written him down a despicable, underhanded sneak, here was that same Mrs.Fosdick--but not at all the same.For this lady was smiling and gracious, welcoming him to her home, addressing him by his Christian name, treating him kindly, with almost motherly tenderness.

Madeline's letters and Mrs.Fosdick's own letters received during his convalescence abroad had prepared him, or so he had thought, for some such change.Now he realized that he had not been prepared at all.The reality was so much more revolutionary than the anticipation that he simply could not believe it.

But it was not so very wonderful if he had known all the facts and had been in a frame of mind to calmly analyze them.Mrs.Fletcher Fosdick was a seasoned veteran, a general who had planned and fought many hard campaigns upon the political battlegrounds of women's clubs and societies of various sorts.From the majority of those campaigns she had emerged victorious, but her experiences in defeat had taught her that the next best thing to winning is to lose gracefully, because by so doing much which appears to be lost may be regained.For Albert Speranza, bookkeeper and would-be poet of South Harniss, Cape Cod, she had had no use whatever as a prospective son-in-law.Even toward a living Albert Speranza, hero and newspaper-made genius, she might have been cold.But when that hero and genius was, as she and every one else supposed, safely and satisfactorily dead and out of the way, she had seized the opportunity to bask in the radiance of his memory.She had talked Albert Speranza and read Albert Speranza and boasted of Albert Speranza's engagement to her daughter before the world.Now that the said Albert Speranza had been inconsiderate enough to "come alive again," there was but one thing for her to do--that is, to make the best of it.And when Mrs.Fletcher Fosdick made the best of anything she made the very best.

"It doesn't make any difference," she told her husband, "whether he really is a genius or whether he isn't.We have said he is and now we must keep on saying it.And if he can't earn his salt by his writings--which he probably can't--then you must fix it in some way so that he can make-believe earn it by something else.He is engaged to Madeline, and we have told every one that he is, so he will have to marry her; at least, I see no way to prevent it.""Humph!" grunted Fosdick."And after that I'll have to support them, I suppose.""Probably--unless you want your only child to starve.""Well, I must say, Henrietta--"

"You needn't, for there is nothing more TO say.We're in it and, whether we like it or not, we must make the best of it.To do anything now except appear joyful about it would be to make ourselves perfectly ridiculous.We can't do that, and you know it."Her husband still looked everything but contented.

"So far as the young fellow himself goes," he said, "I like him, rather.I've talked with him only once, of course, and then he and I weren't agreeing exactly.But I liked him, nevertheless.If he were anything but a fool poet I should be more reconciled."He was snubbed immediately."THAT," declared Mrs.Fosdick, with decision, "is the only thing that makes him possible."So Mrs.Fosdick's welcome was whole-handed if not whole-hearted.

And her husband's also was cordial and intimate.The only member of the Fosdick household who did not regard the guest with favor was Googoo.That aristocratic bull-pup was still irreconcilably hostile.When Albert attempted to pet him he appeared to be planning to devour the caressing hand, and when rebuked by his mistress retired beneath a davenport, growling ominously.Even when ignominiously expelled from the room he growled and cast longing backward glances at the Speranza ankles.No, Googoo did not dissemble; Albert was perfectly sure of his standing in Googoo's estimation.

Dinner that evening was a trifle more formal than he had expected, and he was obliged to apologize for the limitations of his wardrobe.His dress suit of former days he had found much too dilapidated for use.Besides, he had outgrown it.

"I thought I was thinner," he said, "and I think I am.But I must have broadened a bit.At any rate, all the coats I left behind won't do at all.I shall have to do what Captain Snow, my grandfather, calls 'refit' here in New York.In a day or two Ihope to be more presentable."

Mrs.Fosdick assured him that it was quite all right, really.

Madeline asked why he didn't wear his uniform."I was dying to see you in it," she said."Just think, I never have."Albert laughed."You have been spared," he told her."Mine was not a triumph, so far as fit was concerned.Of course, I had a complete new rig when I came out of the hospital, but even that was not beautiful.It puckered where it should have bulged and bulged where it should have been smooth."Madeline professed not to believe him.